Sick Day

I woke up yesterday with the most terriblest cold. My nose was stuffy, my body ached and I was completely exhausted. I stayed inside all day until after dinner, when I went with my family to JP Licks in Davis Square, since my friend Holly is staying with us while she finds a place to live in Boston, and had never had ice cream in New England (ice cream is definitely something we do better on this side of the country).

We followed our ice cream outing with a viewing of Titanic. It absolutely is as good twelve years later as it was the first time I watched it in seventh grade with Stephanie and Perly on our first ever movie trip sans grownups.

Today I think I'll make some banana bread and lie in the hammock, reading my book. Low-key days make getting better easier.

*It should be noted that this photo is actually from San Francisco. Bi-Rite was the only good ice cream I could find in the whole of the city, and so of course I included them on the epic food adventure I took before moving back east.

Tapeworms.

In each of the past four days, I have followed dinner with a fourth meal, sometime around 10 or 11. I have done this each night because I am ravenous, so hungry the thought of going to sleep without providing myself with sustenance to get me through the night was enough to make me want to die.
I think I have a tapeworm.
Except those things make you skinnier, don't they? I'm not getting any skinnier, just hungrier.

In other news, I am dying to make this recipe. I think it would be so fun to have some ladies over for lunch and serve this with salad, biscuits and lemonade. Maybe I shall do that next weekend. If I can get rid of the tapeworm by then. Otherwise, I'm saving all that food for my worm and me.

Homeward Bound

Here are some tidbits that I have learned in the past couple of days:
1. You can pay $2.99 for an hour of wireless at SFO, and, I presume, most airports. (I am aware that most people already knew this. I am not, however, most people.)
2. UCSF medical center has a walk-in urgent care clinic. You don't have to have a doctor at UCSF to use it.
3. The nurse practitioner at UCSF is not all that helpful when you have an attack of the MRSA. They do give you a prescription that, so far, has not caused your face to swell up.

Here are some things that I have observed so far while waiting for my overbooked flight:
1. Two sisters approximately 8 and 10, dressed in matching pajamas and bathrobes. The younger one's p.j.-bathrobe set is blue. The older one's is pink.
2. A 12-year-old girl staring at me strangely for wearing my neck pillow. Her sister is wearing headgear. Headgear is weirder.
3. The planewear of choice for children taking redeyes seems to be pj's, with the notable exception of one little boy who is wearing cutoff kahkis, an orange Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and a suit jacket.

I cannot imagine raising my children on the opposite side of the country from my family. This West Coast adventure is really great for now, but small children + redeye every holiday? I can't imagine that that's fun. Plus, I want my mom around to help me take care of my babies.

My tummy hurts.

I hate being sick. You hurt and it doesn't go away until you get better, which can take days.
I especially hate being sick so far away from my mother and all my loved ones, who will make my bed and rub my back and tell me what to do to get better.
Right now, I want my mommy.

My Friends are Thoughtful

In response to my last post, I got this email from Emma:

Date: 16 Jan 2008 17:15:02 -0500
From: Emma
Subject: oh dear
To: Me

what medicine did you take?

And then, about thirty seconds later:

Date: 16 Jan 2008 17:15:22 -0500
From: Emma
Subject: although
To: me

it might be a viable alternative to collagen injections...

NOTE: For those of you who were wondering, my face is all better, and after a lovely doctor's appointment yesterday, I now know that I am allergic to Sulfa drugs. Whatever those are. Thanks to everyone who emailed me!

Oh, My.

You know what happens when you go to bed after taking medicine that you are allergic to?
You wake up the next morning looking like this!



(Except for the frizzy hair part. That's just me. All me.)

Aren't you glad to read the blog of someone so vain? Someone who would only put flattering pictures of themselves up on the internet?

I am slightly boring

EDIT: Manoli says no one cares about my MRSA. This is probably true. If you don't care, just carry on. Don't read this post. Move on to the delightful cookie recipe. Or some other blog. I might just delete this post all together.

I am tired and I need to do laundry, so here is a fascinating list about my life:
1. Last night we had pot roast from costco for dinner. All we needed to do was put it in the microwave for ten minutes. Surprisingly, it was delicious.
2. I have no clean shirts to wear tomorrow, so I am gonna do me some laundry!
3. I have MRSA again! It's very exciting! Aren't you excited for me?

A longer, more exciting post will follow in the next couple of days. I hope.

That's It. I am officially crazy.

I have officially turned crazy.
"But Abbie," you say, "you've always been crazy. It is one of your many multitudinous charms!"
That may be so, but NOW, now I've turned into one of those people who talks about their health all the time. Even in their blog.
Here are the ailments that have afflicted me in the past three weeks:
-MRSA
-Weird Cold Thing that had no cold symptoms but did come with a truly attractive swollen neck and a fever that made me think the MRSA was killing me.
And Now:
Strange Spot Disease. My entire upper body, including the palms of my hands, is covered in itchy red spots.

And it's all I can talk about. Maybe I'll take a break from posting and come back when I have something actually interesting to say.

Or maybe not.

EDIT: James requested a picture of my spotted hand. This is the best photobooth + the library light can provide. I swear it's worse than that in real life.

Relief

So, last night, I didn't fall asleep until about 2:30 (and that was only after taking Nyquil and curling up in my papasan chair with the extremely soporific December issue of Vogue magazine).
Why, you ask?
Because I thought I was dying.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am sort of a huge hypochondriac, and I often think I'm dying. But this time, I had a legit reason to be scared: I have MRSA, a medication-resistant staph infection. While all of my spots were healing, one of the first signs that MRSA is in your blood is if you get a fever. And I had a fever and nasty swollen glands, but no sore throat, so it was unlike any cold I'd ever had. So I was kind of scared.
This morning I went to the doctor, where I told them that I had MRSA and a fever, and they pushed me up and gave me a REAL doctor, not a physician's assistant or a resident. She took about five seconds to look at me and tell me I had a cold. And that I should keep taking nyquil.
I personally find the details of other people's health kind of boring, so let me apologize for sharing here, but when you are afraid that you are going to die, or at least be in the hospital for a couple of days, it's really nice to find out that all that's really wrong is that you have a cold.

I really love school.

Remember how I hate writing papers? Well, guess what I have to do for tuesday at 6?
That's right! My most favorite thing of all. Except this time, I have to have ten pages. Not a measly five, which I can totally handle. Nosirree. Not for this class no way. I have to write ten pages about education in Micronesia. Aren't you jealous? 'Cause I would be.
I have a paragraph. That is a start. Unfortunately, though, I also have a fever. Boo.

So Many Germs

I thought I'd made it through a summer with The Girl (she of the low muscle tone and near-constant colds) without getting sick once (except for the strep throat incident, but that doesn't count 'cause I was REALLY sick, not just all stuffed up and generally cold-y) because I was STRONG! And I had BUILT UP MY IMMUNITIES! (Wow. Two sets of parentheses in one sentence. I win.)
This is not the case.
A week after I get back to Dartmouth, home to five thousand eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds, I am sick. Not in a little way. In a my voice sounds funny and yesterday when I tried to make a comment in class I had to stop because the snot running down my face was a little distracting way. It's not pretty.
At least I can find comfort in the fact that at least a thousand other Dartmouth students have this nasty nasty cold, too.

Why won't it go away?

Ugh.
My sore throat is back. Also, yesterday I got a chipper call from the doctor saying "oh, by the way, you didn't have strep! Hope the penicillin helped anyway!"
It did. Until I stopped taking it because I THOUGHT I DIDN'T HAVE STREP THROAT.

I love working with small children

I have strep throat. And last night at the doctor, I had a fever of 102.2 degrees. It was glorious.
Now, The Girl doesn't seem to have it, but she probably figured out some way to get those germs from one of her little friends and pass them on to me. She is sneaky like that.